District 219 Changes Requirements for Upcoming School Year

Look out, Stephen Douglas.

Students in will be required to take a class on public speaking, starting with next year’s incoming freshmen.

That was one of several curriculum changes approved by the District 219 school board Dec. 12 after a discussion of the annual review of programs for next year. The district reviews all programs each year to determine any changes that need to be made.

The one-semester public speaking requirement can be satisfied by any of several classes, said Anne Roloff, the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. In addition to public speaking, other classes to be offered next year that will meet the requirement: debate, theater workshop and broadcasting. Students can use a class to meet more than one of the requirements, according to Roloff. For example, theater workshop could fulfill a fine arts requirement, as well as a speech requirement.

Earlier:

“This isn’t adding a credit,” said School Board President Robert Silverman. “This is saying of all the things you learn, public speaking has to be one of them.”

A committee of teachers and administrators will work together to create standards to decide whether new courses will be allowed to count for the speech requirement.

The board also approved several other changes for next year, including the elimination of a basic track of English classes for freshmen and a basic track of geometry classes for sophomores. Students who would have been placed in those classes will be placed in regular classes with an additional class period for extra support, a move intended to help more students become college-ready by the time they graduate, according to District 219 Superintendent Nanciann Gatta.

The district, which includes and high schools, is also changing the curriculum sequences for theater, auto shop and culinary arts.

The new automotive sequence will include a one-year introductory course in automotive fundamentals, followed by a year-long repeatable course in automotive systems and diagnostics, which will rotate topics every two years.

The culinary sequence will start with a one-semester chefs course, as it does now, and then move to a one-semester course in gourmet and international cuisine. After those two classes, students may enroll in the year-long commercial foods class, which they could repeat up to three years.

The theater sequence will start with one semester of theater workshop. Students who want to continue in theater would then take one semester of acting. Those two courses will qualify them for “advanced theater studio,” a one-semester repeatable class that will cover varying topics. Students who plan to pursue theater as a career will be eligible as juniors and seniors for the existing directing and producing classes after two semesters of advanced theater studio.

Most of the changes drew little public comment at the meeting, board members said, because they had been discussed so many times at meetings starting last summer.

“The proposals changed before it even got to the board based on the feedback we got,” Silverman said.

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